Make Fast Friends At Work By Finding A Common Struggle To Bond Over

Even if you don't spend much time together outside of work, having friends at your job is important. If you're having trouble making friends, finding a common obstacle you both have to deal with can help you easily build rapport.

When you're in the trenches of work, your work friends are the comrades you can lean on in troubled times. When you start a new job, or just happen to be a little shy, making new friends can be tough, but in psychologist Ron Friedman's book The Best Place to Work, Friedman suggests that finding a common struggle -- no matter how small -- can be the fast track to friendship.

You may not even work together directly, but there's bound to be something about your workplace you can both relate to. Once you have that in, you can then start to find other areas of common ground. You don't want to let friendship get distracting, but it's always good to have allies around you to lean on in troubled times.